Good morning and welcome back, it’s Ainsley here with all the news you need to start your working week.

Today’s must-reads:
• Australian startups starved of cash
• Commodity export outlook cut
• RBA urged to ditch new inflation goal

What's happening now

Australian startups lag far behind the US and China in funding raised despite the country’s historical effectiveness at creating unicorns. Its relatively small domestic market and distance from the venture capital hubs of Silicon Valley and Beijing remain challenges, but the local startup community is pointing to global success stories such as Canva and Atlassian as signs of its potential.

Australia cut its forecast earnings from commodity exports, as a meteoric rise in gold prices fails to offset weakness in iron ore and natural gas. Total resource and energy export earnings fell about 7% to an estimated A$385 billion in the 12 months through June, the Department of Industry, Science and Resources said in a quarterly report.

The RBA should ditch a new goal of hitting the midpoint of its 2-3% inflation band as the benchmark imposes unrealistic expectations on policymakers, according to Brian Redican, chief economist at sovereign investment manager TCorp. “The focus on ‘2.5%’ provides a false sense of precision about the ability of monetary policy to deliver a particular inflation rate two years ahead,” Redican said in a note Monday.

What happened overnight

Here’s what my colleague, market strategist Mike “Willo” Wilson says happened while we were sleeping…

Weak US personal income and spending data was shrugged off by stocks and the dollar as both rose. The latter was helped in part by gains made over Canada’s loonie after President Donald Trump said he was ending all trade discussions with Canada. This posture does not auger well for other nations with the tariff pause ending in about a week. Today Australia has a private inflation gauge to consider, while New Zealand’s ANZ activity outlook and business confidence warrant focus. China’s manufacturing data also merits attention. The Aussie and kiwi snapped a four-day rally Friday but look set to post solid monthly gains. ASX stock futures imply a positive opening to the week’s trading.

With just 10 days to go until Trump’s country-specific tariffs are set to resume, the White House appears poised to fall short of the sweeping global trade reforms it promised to achieve during the three months they were on hold.

Trump said he has identified a buyer for the US operations of TikTok, the social media app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, but he won’t provide details for two weeks. “We have a buyer for Tiktok, by the way. I think I’ll need probably China approval and I think President Xi will probably do it,” he said, referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in an interview on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.

Elon Musk slammed the US Senate’s latest version of Trump’s multi-trillion dollar tax bill Saturday, warning that the cuts to electric vehicle and other clean energy credits would be “ incredibly destructive” to the country. The bill would destroy millions of US jobs and give “handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future,” Musk said.

Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, turns 90 this week. This isn’t just a milestone birthday, it’s an opportunity to define his legacy, writes Karishma Vaswani for Bloomberg Opinion. Ahead of those celebrations, he’s expected to make a long-anticipated announcement about his heir. China is determined to shape the narrative around this succession, to prevent the erosion of its grip on Tibet.

China wants to control the succession of the Dalai Lama. Photographer: SANJAY BAID/AFP

What to watch

All times Sydney
• 11:00 a.m.: June Melbourne Institute Inflation
• 11:00 a.m.: NZ June ANZ Business Confidence
• 11:30 a.m.: Australia May Private Sector Credit

One more thing...

Optiver, part of a coterie of high-speed trading firms benefiting from a booming market-making industry, shifted the final batch of its 460-strong local staff into a five-floor glossy Sydney office today. The move highlights the growth of tech-driven companies globally, with peers like Citadel Securities and IMC Trading hiring rapidly and building bases in Sydney — an Asia-Pacific hub for trading firms.

The custom staircase with the shape of the firm’s delta logo. Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg